Asus confirms 24 inch G-Sync monitor for $399

It didn’t take that long for Asus to officially announce the adoption of Nvidia’s G-Sync tech. Asus has gone on the record saying that it plans to release a G-Sync-enhanced VG248QE gaming monitor in the first half of 2014 with pricing set at $399 USD in North America.

This monitor is not entirely new, there is a model available without G-Sync today that sells for $279.99 at Newegg. So Nvidia’s “small premium” for a better gaming monitor is $120 for a small PCB with a few memory chips and some sort of processor.

3D vision also works on this monitor with is a plus for a few adopters of this technology but we cannot escape the feeling that most gamers have larger monitors than 24 inches. In our humble opinion the Asus VG278HE, a 27-inch monitor would make more sense and this one currently sells for $379.99 without G-Sync. Add the G-Sync premium and you land at the magical $499 price point.

G-Sync monitors will be limited to Display Port only without audio support, which is again an obstacle but they will be able to have adaptive V-Sync refresh rate called G-Sync from 30 to 144 Hz. In theory your graphics card will push between 30FPS and 144FPS and monitor will draw exactly the same amount of frames eliminating skipping and tearing that we are all too familiar with.

Game frames tend to vary each millisecond, so having a way to convince the monitor that in this moment it should draw 73 FPS, next one at 37 FPS and if the scene is easier to render push the max that should be at 144FPS. This is what G-Sync is all about.

However, a $120 premium won’t be an easy sell as people tend to be very slow with monitor upgrades. Personally, I use an old 26-incher in 1920x1200 and it works just fine in games and for work. At the moment 27-inch full HD monitors start at about €180/$199 and they are sufficient for most casual gamers. Nvidia of course aims for the higher end gaming market and hopes to attract the mainstream gamers with time, but the prices are not working in its favour – and neither is the fact that high-end buyers don’t tend to buy 24-inch monitors.